Did you really know Gordon Lightfoot?
Poll - Total Votes: 13
No, I didn't
Yes, I did.
Now I do - I'm glad I do.
You may vote on multiple answers, up to 2.
His name was Gordon Lightfoot.
He was born in 1938 in Orillia, Ontario. He grew up singing in the church choir. He learned guitar as a teenager. He became a folk singer in Toronto in the 1960s. By the 1970s, he was one of the most beloved voices in Canadian music history.
On November 10, 1975, an iron ore freighter called the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was sailing across Lake Superior in a brutal November storm.
She was the largest ship on the Great Lakes at the time. She was 222 metres long. She had a crew of 29.
She broke apart in the storm.
She sank in 160 metres of cold black water.
All 29 men on board died.
The wreck was found weeks later, lying broken on the lake floor.
Gordon Lightfoot read about the disaster in Newsweek magazine a few days after it happened. He saw the photographs of the families. He read the names of the dead.
He could not let it go.
He wrote a song about it.
"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
It was released in August 1976. Almost six minutes long. Built around a mournful guitar pattern that echoed the rhythm of waves and a vocal that sounded like someone reading the last entries of a logbook.
It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
It became one of the most famous songs ever written by a Canadian.
But here is the part that most people do not know.
Before he released the song, Gordon Lightfoot traveled to meet with the families of the 29 men who had died. He played the song for them. He asked their permission to release it.
He wanted them to hear it first. He wanted to make sure the song honoured the men, not exploited them.
The families gave their blessing.
Lightfoot did one more thing.
He set up a system that, for the rest of his career, sent royalty payments from "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to the families of the dead crew.
He didn't make a press release about it. He didn't tell journalists. He didn't put it in his liner notes.
He just did it.
For nearly 50 years.
He performed the song at thousands of concerts. He performed it on national television. He performed it for prime ministers and at memorial services on the Great Lakes.
He gave the families a small additional thing each year.
In 2010, after a forensic study suggested the ship may have sunk because of a different cause than originally reported, Lightfoot quietly rewrote a single line of his lyrics for live performances — to be more historically accurate and respectful to the men who had died.
He said: "Those families have been listening to me sing about how their fathers died for decades. They deserved the most accurate version I could give them."
Gordon Lightfoot died in May 2023. He was 84 years old.
When the news broke, every radio station in Canada played his songs. There was a national outpouring. The Prime Minister gave a tribute. Other Canadian musicians wrote about him.
But on the shores of Lake Superior — in the small towns where some of the 29 crewmen had come from — something else happened.
People put flowers in the water.
Some of the families' descendants gathered to share what they had been quietly receiving for decades.
A song.
A monthly cheque.
A musician who had treated the dead — and the dead men's children and grandchildren — like they mattered.
A man from Orillia, Ontario.
A song the whole world sang.
A royalty that arrived in twenty-nine mailboxes for fifty years.
A quiet kindness that almost nobody knew about.
That is who Gordon Lightfoot was.
That is who Canada keeps growing.
Same story.
Same fire.
Same country. 🍁
Share if Gordon Lightfoot deserves to be remembered.
He was born in 1938 in Orillia, Ontario. He grew up singing in the church choir. He learned guitar as a teenager. He became a folk singer in Toronto in the 1960s. By the 1970s, he was one of the most beloved voices in Canadian music history.
On November 10, 1975, an iron ore freighter called the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was sailing across Lake Superior in a brutal November storm.
She was the largest ship on the Great Lakes at the time. She was 222 metres long. She had a crew of 29.
She broke apart in the storm.
She sank in 160 metres of cold black water.
All 29 men on board died.
The wreck was found weeks later, lying broken on the lake floor.
Gordon Lightfoot read about the disaster in Newsweek magazine a few days after it happened. He saw the photographs of the families. He read the names of the dead.
He could not let it go.
He wrote a song about it.
"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
It was released in August 1976. Almost six minutes long. Built around a mournful guitar pattern that echoed the rhythm of waves and a vocal that sounded like someone reading the last entries of a logbook.
It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
It became one of the most famous songs ever written by a Canadian.
But here is the part that most people do not know.
Before he released the song, Gordon Lightfoot traveled to meet with the families of the 29 men who had died. He played the song for them. He asked their permission to release it.
He wanted them to hear it first. He wanted to make sure the song honoured the men, not exploited them.
The families gave their blessing.
Lightfoot did one more thing.
He set up a system that, for the rest of his career, sent royalty payments from "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to the families of the dead crew.
He didn't make a press release about it. He didn't tell journalists. He didn't put it in his liner notes.
He just did it.
For nearly 50 years.
He performed the song at thousands of concerts. He performed it on national television. He performed it for prime ministers and at memorial services on the Great Lakes.
He gave the families a small additional thing each year.
In 2010, after a forensic study suggested the ship may have sunk because of a different cause than originally reported, Lightfoot quietly rewrote a single line of his lyrics for live performances — to be more historically accurate and respectful to the men who had died.
He said: "Those families have been listening to me sing about how their fathers died for decades. They deserved the most accurate version I could give them."
Gordon Lightfoot died in May 2023. He was 84 years old.
When the news broke, every radio station in Canada played his songs. There was a national outpouring. The Prime Minister gave a tribute. Other Canadian musicians wrote about him.
But on the shores of Lake Superior — in the small towns where some of the 29 crewmen had come from — something else happened.
People put flowers in the water.
Some of the families' descendants gathered to share what they had been quietly receiving for decades.
A song.
A monthly cheque.
A musician who had treated the dead — and the dead men's children and grandchildren — like they mattered.
A man from Orillia, Ontario.
A song the whole world sang.
A royalty that arrived in twenty-nine mailboxes for fifty years.
A quiet kindness that almost nobody knew about.
That is who Gordon Lightfoot was.
That is who Canada keeps growing.
Same story.
Same fire.
Same country. 🍁
Share if Gordon Lightfoot deserves to be remembered.
70-79, M
